Magnatone

Magnatone traces back to the Dickerson Musical Instrument Company, founded in Southern California in the late 1930s, which changed hands twice before taking the Magnatone name around 1946. The brand built its reputation on a genuine innovation: a true pitch-shifting vibrato circuit, patented in 1957, that used varistors rather than the simpler tremolo circuits every competitor relied on — a sound distinctive enough that it's often mistaken for a much more elaborate effect. Production wound down by the mid-1970s, and the name sat unused until Ted Kornblum, whose family had run St. Louis Music Supply since 1922, discovered the trademark had lapsed and relaunched Magnatone as a hand-wired boutique amp maker in St. Louis in 2013. New amp launches and artist collaborations, including work with Billy Gibbons and Slash, are what we cover most. Here's what we've written.